John Sheda

Back in the 50’s and 60’s “snow days” were not as quickly accessible as they are today. Maybe, just maybe, after an 8-12 inch snowfall with hurricane type winds, school was canceled — finally. However, you had to get up and sit through the local news as schools announced the school day off.

I would sit in front of that old black & white TV with those three stations, WMT, KCRG & KWWL waiting and waiting to see if South Tama was one of the lucky ones. Snow days happened perhaps once or twice in the course of the year. Heck, Chelsea floods seemed to be more common to miss school than the snow.

But back in the days of my grade school years at St. Joseph’s school in Chelsea, we never, never had a “no-school” day because of…….well, anything. Us “Catholic-ers,” as Dad used to say, were right in line with the mailmen.

You know, “through rain, sleet or snow” school was on at St. Joe’s. NOT FOR EVERYBODY THOUGH!

Nope, only us town kids had to go to school. Country kids lucked out “cuz they couldn’t get through those twenty foot drifts but the town kids could trudge through the wind, snow, ice and sleet for school. Nothing never really went on at school since the country boys and girls weren’t there. It wasn’t like we got some advantage or something. We’d watch some kind of PBS documentary show, read and even play some basketball in the gym.

However on those rare days we got off due to the snow, we couldn’t wait to get outside, build igloos, have snow-ball fights and go sleigh-riding out in the country. But first a bunch of us kids would grab the shovels and go shovel the sidewalks of people that needed our help — for a small fee of course.

Fifty cents to a buck & a half was the usual going rate. On a good day of working hard, you could bring home almost five bucks but not very often, and with this “goldmine” of hard-earned loot, we headed to Sheda’s Restaurant to play the pinball machine or to the Silver Dollar and play several games of pool. Heck, as we got a little older, we might even get into a “pepper” game with some of the old timers in town.

We liked to make fun of those “old-timers” but boy, could they play pepper. And they instinctively knew that a “fool and his money” soon parted. I lost a lot of my hard earned money to those guys and I think they enjoyed “teaching” me a card lesson or two.

Deb Veit, my eventual wife, worked at the bank and lived out in the country about 4 miles south of town and she was always so excited when the snow kept coming down. There was no way she’d have to go to work that day due to being out in the country and even the snowplows wouldn’t be out until the next day.

But, but, but: he might be a couple hours late, but Deb’s brother, Jerry, would get his ’57 Chevy going and spin, get stuck, spin around again, get pulled out and get through those four miles and down their quarter mile lane — all to pick up his little sister, Debbie for work. How many times I’ve heard that story has to be in the thousands.

Well that, my friends, is a normal snow day in Chelsea way back in 1958 or so.

What did you do on your snow days? Let me know at jsheda@indytel.com or call me at 319.327.4640. Let it snow.